Disappointing Solo Box Office Proves Lucasfilm Is Not Invincible

Solo: A Star Wars Story, the latest Star Wars spin-off movie, hit theaters in a prime spot on Memorial Day weekend, a time that usually spells big profits for movie studios. But the Force, apparently, is not with Solo; so far, the film is performing well under the studio’s initial estimation.

Solo, which relays the heist-themed backstory of famed galactic smuggler Han Solo, earned an estimated $83 million domestically over the weekend, and is projected to make just $101 million by Memorial Day. That’s almost $30 million behind Solo’s low-end projection, according to Business Insider. By as late as the middle of last week, the film was expected to break box-office records with a projected take of between $130 million and $150 million on 4,381 screens. Solo falls well below every other Star Wars opening weekend—even Rogue One, the franchise’s first foray into one-shot spin-offs. They’ll need to do more than rob a spice mine to make up the difference.

A take of $101 million over Memorial Day weekend would be a great opening for pretty much any other movie at any other studio, but it’s well under the bar for the precedent Star Wars has set. Worldwide, the film has also made less than the domestic openings of all three of Lucasfilm’s last Star Wars movies, according to a BuzzFeed report, falling just behind Rogue One. It’s even doing worse than the much-maligned (but financially solid) Star Wars prequels.

There are a few reasons why this could be happening. First off, Solo had a famously nightmarish production process; its woes were known publicly long before a trailer was released, after Lucasfilm fired the film’s initial co-directors, Phil Lord and Chris Miller, and replaced them with veteran Ron Howard. That kind of buzz can work in a movie’s favor—but it could also kill interest for fans who would rather not watch an awkwardly cobbled-together project. There’s also the fact that Han Solo’s past had already been revealed to mega-fans in a series of Star Wars Legends books that are no longer considered official Star Wars canon—something that’s still a sticking point for some. Solo may also be suffering due to lingering backlash to The Last Jedi, which hit theaters merely six months ago.

Perhaps the problem is that Solo doesn’t seem like essential viewing; watching it is not necessary if one wants to understand the wider arc of the Star Wars series, as continued by The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi. Or maybe it’s simply the victim of Star Wars fatigue, as films that were once major, once-in-a-while events have now become more commonplace. Either way, Solo’s underperformance isn’t a disaster—neither for Lucasfilm nor for Disney, which has already made back the $4 billion it used to buy Lucasfilm. Never tell them, or Han Solo, the odds.